


on a Tuesday afternoon overlooking the Thames

by darcylindbergh



Series: the definition of justice [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Discussions about Justice, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-05 22:42:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12198867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: Sometimes after a case, Sherlock gets lost.John leads him home.





	on a Tuesday afternoon overlooking the Thames

John finds him on Southwark Bridge.

Sherlock is a dark figure in the mid-afternoon sunshine, standing straight and tall on the eastern side and looking out over the water. He’s a step or two back from the railing, so John takes his time, walking down from the north end of the bridge with his hands in his pockets and his heart in his throat.

He goes slowly, giving Sherlock lots of time to turn and walk away. Just in case.

Sherlock doesn’t.

It had been a bad case. The sort of case where no one wins. The sort of case that makes Lestrade’s shoulders droop and Donovan’s voice lower; the sort of case that makes John put away his pen, close his laptop, delete the entry. The sort of case that makes Sherlock disappear into the city, trying to find its rhythm, trying to put the world back into some kind of order.

Resolution is not the same as restoration. Knowing _what_ or _why_ or _who_ or _how_ can never take away the bare, cold fact that something terrible happened.

Nothing ever goes back to the way it was before.

John steps in next to Sherlock and follows his gaze out to the horizon. The Shard rises up to the south, blinding in the reflection of the sun. The whole of London seems to be shining and it seems wrong, somehow. Irreverent, maybe. Needlessly cruel.

“You were good today,” John says.

Sherlock gives him the briefest glance out of the side of his eye, the kind of glance he takes when he can’t help himself but wishes he could. “Does it matter?”

For a minute, John lets the question sit in the air in front of them, made solid in its own importance. Lets it sit on the railing, bold lettering, clear type, and considers everything it might encompass. “Doesn’t it?”

Sherlock shifts, spares another glance before bowing his head and speaking to the water below them. “I—don’t know.”

“You got a bad guy off the street. Gave that family an answer, at least.”

“I got _one_ bad guy off the street. I gave _one_ family an answer. And there will be another case just like this tomorrow, and another the day after that, and the day after that.” He shrugs, his voice wavering under the effort to sound nonchalant. “How are you supposed to decide whether or not it matters? Who’s it supposed to matter to?”

John looks over, watches Sherlock’s profile for a moment. His eyes are squinting against the sun. His brow is furrowed.

There had been a time, once, not so very long ago, when Sherlock would not have said such a thing. When Sherlock would have brushed off his shoulders and held his head high and carried on with the next case, the next experiment, the next puzzle. When he would have gotten up day after day after day and fought against the rising current of crime and violence as though the thought had never occurred to him.

_Does it make a difference? Does it help? Does it matter?_

_Do I?_

But John knows the thought was there, because John was there too. John was there for all of it. He was there when the line went dead in Sherlock’s hand, and a dozen lives with it. He was there when Sherlock had leveled a gun at a bomb on a pool floor, and when he had talked one out of Henry Knight’s mouth, and when he had stepped toward one that was pointed at him, believing that the person holding it cared about him. Believing that someone caring about him would save him.

John knows because caring about someone is exactly how Sherlock saves them, and John was there on the pavement while Sherlock was up on the roof, and his voice had broken right before he’d said _goodbye._

He watches Sherlock, blinking hard into the wind, and says, “It mattered to me.”

Finally, Sherlock looks over at John, properly looks over. His eyes are pale and crystalline in the sunlight, gone pink around the edges from the rush of the wind and from his own thoughts. The lines at the corners are bunched in confusion.

“When you—died,” John clarifies. “To know, you know. Why. To have that answer. It mattered to me.”

“It was to protect you,” Sherlock says, not quite getting it.

John looks back out over the water. He wishes he could take Sherlock’s hand, but they’re still tucked into his pockets, drawing his coat closer around him.

“It was because you loved me,” he corrects softly. “You loved me enough to think I was worth protecting. Enough to give everything for that protection, and more than once, too. Knowing that seems to have made quite a bit of difference to you and me, don’t you think?”

It had made all the difference, and Sherlock doesn’t try to deny it. It had been the difference, after the dust had settled, between the house in the suburbs and the home at 221B. It had been the difference between the upstairs bedroom and the downstairs one. Between waking up alone, the way Sherlock had done for far too long and the way John hadn’t done with far too much resentment, and hatred, and guilt, and waking up warm and safe and wanted.

The difference between _loving_ , and knowing you’re _being loved back._  

“Most people don’t get answers like that,” Sherlock says, turning back to the river, following John’s line of sight into nothing. “These victims, their families—they get answers like, oh, sorry, wrong time, wrong place.” His voice sharpens with bitterness. “Oh, sorry, they unfortunately knew a terrible person and didn’t know how terrible until it was too late, or because they _were_ the terrible person, and someone had had enough. And I—I can’t do anything about it. I can’t stop any of it from happening.”

He blows out all his air, like something inside him is collapsing underneath the weight of having spent all afternoon examining his own helplessness. John leans into him a little, just barely brushing their shoulders together. After a moment, Sherlock leans back.

“That doesn’t mean that what you _can_ do doesn’t matter,” John says.

“What I _can_ do isn’t enough.” He leaves the comfort of John’s shoulder and takes a few steps forward, leaning his elbows against the east rail of the bridge to look down at the river, watching it flow beneath them and out toward the sea. “There’s no cumulative effect of what I can do. I’m just an after-the-fact consolation, like a plaster tossed haphazardly in the direction of an amputated leg.”

John leans against the railing next to him, putting his shoulder against Sherlock’s again, more firmly this time. Sherlock leans back against him, and John can’t help a small smile.

“I’ve spent some time, you know, treating amputations, actually,” he says to the horizon. “And no matter how many I treated, or how many bullet wounds, or shrapnel wounds, or—or twisted ankles, I don’t know—there were always more.”

Sherlock doesn’t say anything, but he leans against John a little harder. _I’m listening,_ it says. John goes on.

“But I treated every wound I saw. Every one. And sometimes it was like an endless stream, like Afghanistan itself was bleeding out inside my med tent, but I kept at it anyway, because to the person who’s hurt, it is the most important thing in the world that anybody could be doing right then. To that soldier, it was the most important thing, the _only_ thing, that could even _begin_ to matter. So you do it. Because it matters to them and it matters right now, and I was the one they were relying on to care even a fraction as much as they did.”

When he looks back over to Sherlock, Sherlock is already looking back.

“You don’t ignore an amputated leg just because they’ll have to learn to walk with a prosthetic afterward,” John finishes gently. “You don’t ignore a hemorrhage just because tomorrow someone else might bleed.”   

Sherlock takes a deep breath and nods just once, like he’s committing it to memory, and they go back to watching the river. Leaning against the railing makes them almost the same height—Sherlock bent at a more severe angle, John standing a little straighter—and Sherlock leans more and more of his weight against John, until finally he sighs again and tips his head to rest along the line of John’s shoulder.

“So how do you know when it’s time to stop?” he asks.

John turns his nose into Sherlock’s curls, breathing in the wind-blown scent of him, salt and exhaust and hair product. He thinks about what Sherlock would be like without the trappings of the work, without the chase and the thrill, without the Met at his back and without the clients at his door. The vision is faint, like he’s looking at it from a long way off, but it’s there: Sherlock with his temples gone grey, plotting notes for some experiment on the wall over the sofa, plying John with kisses and cups of tea and notes written in the margins of a manuscript.

John can imagine it, but not yet. There’s more they can do. They’ve still got time left.

But it’s Sherlock’s decision. It will always be Sherlock’s decision.

So instead he says, “Well, you know, I didn’t get to choose when to stop, it was. I got shot, and that was it. So I might not be the best person to ask, really, but I guess what it comes down to is this: do you _want_ to stop?”

Sherlock is quiet again for a bit, and John wonders if he sees the same far away imagining that John does. If he can see them like that, growing old together. If he can see all the good they could still do between now and then.

“No,” Sherlock says slowly. “I don’t.”

“Then it’s not time yet.”

Another pause, and then Sherlock says, “All right.” He leaves his head on John’s shoulder, and for a while it’s just them, and this: the sound of traffic and water, the glare of the sunlight off the glass and steel of London around them. The comfort of the space between them.

“Come on,” John says finally. “Let’s go home.”

Sherlock takes his hand. They go home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr!](http://www.watsonshoneybee.tumblr.com)


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